


One. Two. Three. Four.

by TeyrianTimelord



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV), bondlock - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anxiety Attacks, Appearances by John Mary and Mycroft, Bondlock, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Like a serious dick, Lots of depressing stuff, M/M, Molly is James' cousin, Moriarty Is A Dick, Panic Attacks, Psychological Torture, Q is a Holmes, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2758568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeyrianTimelord/pseuds/TeyrianTimelord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty uses a new form of psychological warfare where one party suffers and the other watches. Everyone's favorite pathologist and Quartermaster become the unfortunate subjects and must learn to cope with the aftermath. Numbers make the world go 'round, so Q looks to them to find solace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One. Two. Three. Four.

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I have been working on these past four days. It was actually very hard to write as I have never gone this indepth with a torture fic before. I promised Q and Molly a happy ending, so fortunately there is no character death or irreparable damage done. I might go back and rewrite some parts of it later since I'm not completely satisfied with the last few pages. I'm open for suggestions on how to improve it. (Also, if you love me, you'll draw Q/Molly fan art!)
> 
> As always, enjoy and review!

“Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me?”

The words were playing on repeat on every screen, in every home, in every city. The whole world knew he was back, and the looks of surprise and shock and fear on all those usually so boring faces was enough to make Moriarty laugh nearly as hard as he did that day on the rooftop. Dear Silva’s last parting gift before foolishly sacrificing himself to kill that silly old woman was the best birthday present he could have ever asked for. That was the thing about having so many connections. The favors were luxurious to say the least. Rolling in their panic was better than any silk robe or plush blanket in the whole wide world. This was what it meant to be more than staying alive. Thriving. Thriving in glorious upset and unrest in the masses of lemmings. It made him so perfectly giddy that he couldn’t help but spin his chair in a few circles just to keep from busting a lung. And now, to begin the fun.

“Moran, be a lamb and invite our guests over to celebrate,” he ordered his assistant who was sitting patiently on the other side of the office. “Success if pointless if you have no one to share it with.”

And he had selected his audience with great care. Admittedly, a good deal of it was thanks to luck. Especially since Mary Morstan (whom he had the great misfortune of crossing paths with on a previous occasion) entered the picture, Sherlock’s leverage was all but impossible to reach. John now had his supreme assassin wife to protect him. Lestrade had risen so far in Scotland Yard that the hassle that would go into killing him would only be an annoyance. At Sherlock’s request, Mrs. Hudson was under an exponentially large amount of security from Mycroft. And of course there was Molly’s MI6 cousin watching her back at every turn. Not impossible to accomplish, but bothersome. 

But then he entered the picture. At first Moriarty thought he was just some tech geek Sherlock had bribed or charmed into doing his computer work for him, but then he blossomed into so much more. A third Holmes brother (one that Sherlock didn’t loathe, no less) was like a godsent falling right into his lap. The icing on the cake, though, was that Dr. Hooper had a fondness for him that was evenly reciprocated. Four birds, one stone. Four very plump and juicy birds that would make one wonderful feast.

***  
Sentiment was something Q’s brothers had tried very hard to beat out of him. Though their parents insisted that love and nurture was an important part of life and wanted to raise the youngest son accordingly, Mycroft and Sherlock had taken it upon themselves to do whatever it took to sway him otherwise. They refused to give him anything but the most practical of gifts on his birthday or Christmas (if he got anything from them at all), intentionally sabotaged any childhood sweethearts he tried to pursue, and absolutely refused to let him get a cat, no matter how much he begged and pleaded for one. When Mummy had tried getting him one, Mycroft promptly stole it and sold it to a barn down the road that needed pest control for their rat problem while Sherlock spun a clever lie about how it had been hit by a car and that due to his medical history they would most certainly all develop allergies. Naturally, Q ran off to uni as soon as he turned 16 and didn’t make contact with anyone in his family until he finished his Ph.D. Much to his mother’s chagrin and his brothers’ delight, sentiment became a foreign concept for Q to grasp.

Maybe that was why he was so desperate to make Molly’s first birthday as his official girlfriend so special. Thankfully, John Watson had done wonders for Sherlock’s temperament, and his own affections for the pathologist swayed him to help put together what Q hoped would be the perfect evening. He ordered a nice car to pick her up from her flat and reserved an entire room at her favorite Italian restaurant. As a romantic touch, he ordered a river view suite at the Savoy, preset with iced champagne and chocolates (all on Mycroft’s credit card, of course). As much as she would never admit it, he knew she liked the opportunity to dress up and accept doting gestures of affection. Especially with how much times they both spent at work, he wanted to make extra sure that she knew how much it meant to him to make their relationship work, even if he was somewhat lacking in experience when it came to sentiment. 

Oh, and there was that small guilty detail about being former “friends with benefits” and currently in one aggressive “flirtationship” with James Bond. Her cousin. Her adoring, protective cousin, who already made it clear that if one word got out about them to his sweet little cousin he would dump his body in the Thames without a second thought. At Mrs. Watson’s advice, that was worth about five years of serious sucking up before even broaching the subject in conversation. And even then, she suggested a full two dozen roses and a £50 bottle of wine. Tonight was only the beginning of what Mary teasingly called the I Fucked Up Campaign. 

As he sat at the set table for two in Assaggi’s, fiddling with the cufflinks on his shirt, he tried not to be concerned with the fact that the usually punctual Molly was going on twenty minutes late without so much as a text. He tried to assure himself that her shift was running a bit overtime, or something went wrong with her curling iron, or even just traffic, but as an MI6 Quartermaster every unfulfilled detail made him nervous. After fighting with himself for another five minutes, he finally called her mobile. It went straight to voicemail. A pang in his gut told him that something was very wrong. He went to work on his phone again.

‘Have you seen Molly? –Q’

‘She left the morgue an hour ago. –SH’

‘Where’s Molly? –Q’

‘Not her babysitter. –MH’

‘Homeless network headed to her flat now. –SH’

‘Check on the car company, Myc. –Q’

A waiter came by to refill his water glass and Q took a long gulp in an attempt to calm his nerves. If Sherlock didn’t text him back in the next two minutes he was going to look for her himself. Right after. Right after… Right… After…

Q glanced down at his water and only then noticed the slightest bit of white residue clinging to the side of the glass. All he had time to mutter was “shit” before he felt himself fall out of the chair and the room spiraled into blackness.

***  
The first thing Molly noticed when she blinked back into consciousness was the throbbing pain behind her eyes, exactly the day after that one Friday night in uni when her roommates told her that the orange slushes were virgin but had a shot tequila in each. Even the soft light that barely seeped through the single window was enough to make her screw her eyes shut again after only a few seconds of exposure. The second thing she noticed was that she was reclined on a soft sofa under a plush throw blanket. What the bloody hell happened? The last thing she remembered was getting into the car Q had sent for her. Did they really have that much to drink? No, that couldn’t be it.

“Good morning, Miss Molly. Did you miss me?”

In spite of the warm blanket, Molly’s entire body ran cold. It ran through her head at the speed of light. Did you miss me? Did you miss me? Did you miss me? And the visions of Sherlock’s fall flashed before her eyes. Ignoring the skull-splitting pain, she tossed the blanket aside and stumbled to her feet. Sure enough, there he was, standing in the doorway of the dark and empty room, face still plastered with that terrifying grin. She fumbled for something, anything, on her person that could be used as a weapon, but her heart sunk as she realized she was still in the purple backless dress Q had sent her as an early birthday present.

Q!

“Can I just say that you look absolutely ravishing?” Jim said, leaving the entry way to pace the room, eyeing her like a hawk scanning a mouse. “Your boyfriend must love you a lot to drop that much money on a dress. It’s a shame he hasn’t seen it on you yet.”

Yet.

“You don’t want to hurt me,” Molly warned, though her voice was much meeker than she would have liked. “Sherlock will come after you, and John, and Mary, and James, and Q.” 

She wiped her sweaty palms on the hem of her dress, hoping he didn’t notice the beads of perspiration that were forming on her neck. Moriarty only chuckled.

“Did you really think I was thick enough not to know Sherlock was fond of you? That I didn’t threaten you that day because you didn’t matter? I almost lost my life over you once, Dr. Hooper, and I am not about to make that mistake again.”

Molly swallowed hard. James. He must have had something to do with it. She scanned the room looking for a means of escape, but there was only a small window near the ceiling, a blacked out mirror, the couch she woke up on, and one door. Hardly much to work with. She chewed on her bottom lip, trying to concentrate through the migraine and the fear. 

“Oh, and just as a point of interest,” he started again, a devious sparkle lighting up his eyes. “You don’t have to worry about your boyfriend coming for you.”

Right on cue, what Molly had thought was a mirror was brightened by a sudden flood of light. It was a window, and on the other side was a man she had never seen before standing over the crumpled form of another, shirtless and tied to a chair. Though she couldn’t see his face, the slender build and mass of brown hair was enough. Against every instinct that told her to stay put, not to react, not to show fear, Molly ran to the window and started pounding on the glass with as much force as she could, screaming for Q, but there was no response. Her skin crawled when she heard Moriarty laugh hysterically.

“His dose was significantly stronger than yours. Should be at least another hours before he’s coherent again.”

“Please, let him go,” Molly begged. “Sherlock doesn’t care about him any more than an acquaintance. I’m the only one who cares and you already have me.”

She bit back a hiss of disgust when Jim gripped her jaw so that she had to face the amusement in his eyes. She felt sick to her stomach and bile rising in the back of her throat. The pit of anxiety in her gut refused to stop knotting. 

“But that’s the point, honey,” he hummed pleasantly. “Your dear 007 cousin bargained for your safety. Once scratch and the whole of MI6 will come down on me. But this is so much better. With how sentimental everyone is these days, it will tear him and Sherlock apart when I break you without so much as a single cut.”

He tapped the tip of her nose with his finger to emphasize his sincerity, making her cringe.

“Enjoy the show, sweetie,” he called as he exited swiftly.

Molly ran after him, hoping that maybe somehow she could find some strength to fight him, but by the time she reached the door he had already shut it in her face. Through what must have been speakers hidden somewhere in the walls, she heard a groan that could be nothing other than Q waking up. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Molly slowly approached the window. He was still wearing his slacks, but everything else was gone, even his shoes and glasses. A piece of her heart chipped when he moaned, “Molly… Where’s Molly?”

She clasped her violently trembling hands over her mouth, worried that she might vomit just at the sight of him exposed and bewildered. She knew his pale skin was nothing but a canvas to them. A canvas to create a masterpiece that would shred her into a thousand shards of terror. The man on the other side of the room unrolled a towel that had a variety of household things onto a small table, which made them even more bloodcurdling. Paring knife. Pliers. Scissors. Lighter. Wrench. Screwdriver. Hammer. The moment she realized they were all from the supply drawer in her flat, she heaved what was left of yesterday’s lunch onto the floor. The personal touch.

“Where’s Molly?” Q asked again, more coherently this time. 

The man stayed silent, continuing to unpack a variety of things that even Molly didn’t recognize. She noticed his glasses sitting on the far end of the table, one of the lenses cracked. Q was growing more restless, visibly struggling against the handcuffs on his wrists.

“By order of the British government, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, and Military Intelligence Section 6, I demand you tell me the location and status of Doctor Molly Elizabeth Hooper!” he shouted. 

It earned him a punch to the side by his guard, and Molly jumped at the sound of his sudden struggle for breath. Judging by the impact of the hit and his increased gasping, he may have probably broke a rib or two. She whimpered, knowing that it was only going to get worse.

Molly had seen a lot of damaged corpses come through her morgue, especially when Sherlock had a particularly interesting case transferred in from another hospital. Gunshot victims, men chopped to bits, beheadings, ripped out internal organs, bodies bitten and beaten and gnawed and pulverized beyond identification. On a weekly basis she found herself covered in blood and brain matter and other bodily fluids, but it was just another part of her job. Even though she was a very sensitive person when it came to animals and her friends, she had a stomach of iron when it came to gore and death. No one, not even her childhood counselors or even herself really, could put a finger on how such a sweet little girl had become so unfazed by that kind of morbidity. But it was always in death, never a living human. 

The first few fist-to-body beatings, she could muscle through. There was blood spatter, bones cracking, shouts of pain, but she managed. She took note of every injury and committed it to memory, distracting herself by organizing her thoughts in how she would list them to John the moment he got his hands on Q. It was the only way to stay sane. Think of nothing but how she could help when it was over. Nothing else. The strategy failed, though, after the first fingernail. He screamed and she screamed and he cried and she cried. Seven fingernails, three teeth, and ten toenails later, Molly was curled in a ball on the floor, dry heaving and squeezing her hands over her ears in an attempt to drown out the sobs and the pleas. He kept screaming over and over again, “Kill me! Please! Kill me!” 

The hyperventilation finally sent Molly into shock, and the world at last went silent.

***  
John and Mary were still getting out of the cab when Sherlock literally kicked through the front doors of MI6. He had already smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before even drinking his morning tea and he was half way through pack number two. Still his nerves were so jittery he knew the only things that would calm him down would either be finding Molly and Sherrinford unharmed or shooting up a few ounces of heroin. 

Even in his hassled state, it was still easy to deduce the man waiting for him in the lobby. Obviously a field operative. Judging by the facial structure and bloodshot eyes, he was at least a second cousin to Molly and had some sort of personal connection to Sherrinford. Platonic or romantic; questionable. 

“You must be Sherlock Holmes,” the man grumbled, demonstrating that he was just as stressed and sleepless as Sherlock. “Bond. James Bond.”

Sherlock didn’t have the patience to be polite.

“I could not care less. Have those government idiots found anything from their laptops yet?”

Bond ignored the quip, which actually gave Sherlock the slightest bit of respect, even if he was an MI6 lackey. For a man with a job usually given to pricks with large egos, he was impressed that he let that smack slide for the sake of Molly and Sherrinford. 

“Molly was kidnapped from her car and Q from the restaurant. We’re assuming that James Moriarty is responsible, but we don’t have a location.”

Sherlock groaned and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. Two days these bastards had the best technology of the British government at their disposal and all they could come up with was James Moriarty?! Any urchin off the street could figure that out! It was a good thing John and Mary finally made their appearances; another few minutes and Sherlock was honestly concerned that he might raid the nearest police station for all the drugs they had in evidence. He thought Molly was safe. He let her go because he thought she was safe. From the moment he chose her from all the other workers in the morgue she became his responsibility. From the moment she helped him at Reichenbach he owed her his life. As for Sherrinford, well, Sherlock produced another cigarette. The youngest Holmes had walked out of their lives for a reason. Less than a year back into it and he’s abducted. The one brother who actually had a chance to be a decent person and Sherlock drug him down again the same way he had when they were kids. Was there any forgiveness for that?

“Does Q have any tracking signals on him at all? Double-O Q-branch someone has to be monitoring him,” Mary chimed in. 

Bond looked perplexed by the amount she knew about MI6, but answered anyway, “His phone was the only thing chipped and they left it in the restaurant parking lot.”  
“Any surveillance tapes to check for license plates?” John asked.

“They were fake. The van was found behind an abandoned warehouse. We swept the place, but nothing.” He turned to Sherlock. “If Q stays missing for more than 72 hours, MI6 will pronounce him killed in action. We have less than a day left to find them with government resources.” 

In a long drag, Sherlock finished what was left of his cigarette and dropped in on the floor, not even bothering to smother it with his shoe. While dismantling his network, he found information on a few bases he had in England, but they had all been deactivated as soon as he returned from the dead. Think, you idiot, think! What’s the motivation, what’s the plan? Moriarty always has an endgame. What’s the endgame?!

Then it hit him.

“He wants us to find them, just not yet,” Sherlock announced, causing Mary, John, and Bond to look at him as if he had sprouted a second head. “There is no information he would want from either of them. He’s using them as tools, but he’s not done with them yet. He wants us to wait.”

Bond clenched his fist. Sherlock could see him battling with himself over whether or not to punch the detective in the face. 

“We can’t wait,” he growled.

In the same second, four text alerts went off at once, and each of them reached for their phones.

‘So impatient. I haven’t even given you the rules of the game yet. Jim Moriarty x’

“Have Q-branch trace the signal, now!” Sherlock ordered, and they all sprinted through the metal detectors before security even had time to tell them to stop.  
***  
“Wakey wakey, it’s time for breakfast!”

Molly whimpered. The smell of fresh food mixed with stale vomit and dried blood made her stomach churn. She was back on the couch, but this time there was a coffee table with a full spread of eggs, sausage, and toast while Jim sat in an added chair across from her. The window was black again. Maybe they had finally grown tired of the begging and put a bullet in his skull after she had fainted. 

“For someone who plays with dead people all day, I have to admit, I expected you to last longer,” Jim said with a frown while slathering jam on a slice of toast. “Care for something?”

“Where’s Q?” she demanded, though her voice cracked, throat dry from all the crying she had done.

Moriarty rolled his eyes.

“You two are so boring, saying the same things over and over again. ‘Where’s Molly?’ ‘Where’s Q?’ I liked it better when you were begging for his life. At least that was entertaining,” he mocked. 

Molly had always been a mousy kind of girl. Even in school she never spoke out of turn, and if she did something wrong, she took her punishment quietly and respectfully. Bullies never bothered her because she never reacted. People pushed her around her whole life because she was pliant. Her father, her classmates, Sherlock. But something was different now. Something was kindling in her that she never knew existed. Taking her life into her hands, she swept her arm across the table and sent every last piece of food flying across the room. No more. No more.

“Where’s Q?” she repeated, Moriarty still gasping from surprise. 

“Good golly, Miss Molly, I didn’t know you had the guts!” he laughed. “Now this is progress.” 

He brushed the crumbs that has hit him off his suit as he rose to his feet, glancing down at her as if she was nothing but a child throwing a tantrum. But he also looked pleased. 

“Alright then, if you insist. Come along.”

Still frazzled by her outburst, it took all of Molly’s concentration to heave herself to her feet, and even then stumbled a few times. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she was still wearing her low heels from dinner. Even the extra few inches made her feel miles above ground, and just keeping up with Moriarty felt like walking a tightrope. Outside the room was a dark and dank corridor with nothing but a flickering lamp at the end of the hall. She inhaled deeply as he led her to the next door. She knew she wasn’t prepared to see what else they had done to Q after she passed out. Molly wasn’t even sure if she would be more relieved if he was dead or alive. 

It was a good thing Molly refused to eat, because if she had it would have ended up on the floor. Q was still tied to the same chair, but she couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, here or gone. His whole body was slumped over, barely held upright by the handcuffs. A stream of blood was trickling out of his mouth and a gaping wound on the side of his head, pooling in his lap and on the floor to with tributary streams from his hands and feet. His usually thick and lively hair was flat with sweat, hanging low enough to cover his eyes. Not a single inch of skin was visible from under the layers of black and brown and red. Most horrendously, though, ‘MH + Q’ was carved into the raw flesh of his back. Without waiting for any permission, Molly immediately ran to his side and dropped to her knees in the puddle of cold blood and feeling the warmth of fresh fluid dripping onto her skin. She gently cupped his face in her hands.

“Q, can you hear me? Please, Q, please talk to me,” she pleaded, tears starting to sting her eyes again.

“Mmmm…. Mmmm…” was all she got in response.

“Please, Q, you have to stay with me. James is going to find us, okay? James and Sherlock are coming to find us.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jim pull out his phone and text someone. Panic took hold of her chest. Was he calling for that man to come back? To destroy Q even more? To finally kill him?

“Mmm… Mmmm… Molly?”

One of Q’s eyes opened slightly, the other was too swollen shut to move. Molly’s heart jumped. 

“I’m here. It’s okay, I’m right here.”

It wasn’t okay, not by any means, but that was all she had the heart to say. Her eyes kept drifting to her own initials, visible on his shoulder blade from where he was hunched over. How would he ever get better from that? Even if, by some grace of God, he managed to survive and heal, the scars would never go away. A permanent reminder that she was the reason for all his torture, and that all his agony was for her. She wanted to hold him and find some way to transfer all the damage into herself, but she was afraid that any more of a touch would cause even more harm. A fresh wave of tears poured into her palms.

“Please,” he rasped through the blood and the tears. “Please make them kill me.”

“No, Q, Sherlock and James-“

“I can’t do it anymore. I can’t, I can’t,” he started sobbing, leaning his face into her hands. 

For a brief moment, Molly wondered if she had the strength to snap his neck and set him free. Was it worth it to hold out hope that Sherlock and James would save them, and that somehow they would go back to living their lives? What life what there for them to live after all this anyway? She would never be able to close her eyes without seeing this image of Q. Not for as long as she breathed. Hands shaking, she moved one under his chin. It would have to be quick and clean. Just as she was about to pull as hard as she could, a gunshot rang out from the hallway, and Jim was on her faster than she could release her fingers from Q. 

“You were really about to do it, weren’t you?” he accused breathily in her ear. “Then my work here is done, dear. Live with that, if you can.”

***  
Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.

The steady beeps were just barely audible through the ringing in Q’s ears. He tried to count them. One. Two. Three. Six? No, that didn’t sound right. One. Two. Three. Four? That was better. Numbers somehow made the pain less intense, giving him a bullet to bite. Count the cuts. Count the rips. Count the blows. Most of the time he never made it past ten without losing his way, but as long as he had the numbers, everything would be okay. It had to be. Numbers made sense. Numbers did not change. Numbers built up his entire life. It was when he lost the numbers that he lost control. In that perpetual night with no dawn, the numbers had disappeared. He tried, god knows he tried. One. Two. One. Two. Then were was only ‘one,’ then there was nothing. Being able to count again was like finally being able to breathe after a lifetime under water.

He tried to take a deep breath, but it sent a lightning strike of pain through his chest that caused him to gasp and sputter. The blips started to go faster, and so did the numbers running through his head. More noises joined in, creating a cacophonic barrage he had to squeeze his hands over his ears to block out. Focus on the numbers. Only the numbers… Then there were lights and shapes. He didn’t know where they came from or what they were, but it only became harder to breathe as they moved faster and grew louder. Q squeezed harder down over his ears.

One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Two. Two!

“Q, calm down,” a gruff voice commanded him from everywhere at once. “You’re okay. Everything is okay.”

Q finally focused his eyes on the lights and the shapes. At first it made him feel as if his corneas had caught fire, and he blinked as many times as he could to extinguish the flames. It took several moments for the searing pain to die down enough for him to concentrate on finding the voice. He was stranded in a sea of white and grey and silver, with islands of sounds bobbing here and there. Not just sounds, voices. More voices, but he needed to find the one. After what could have been a moment or a millennium, the room focused into the same fuzzy focus that came naturally without his specs. And then he found the voice. The voice and the bright, shining, angelic blue eyes that accompanied it.

Letting out both a gasp and a sob, Q’s bandaged fingers found a hold in Bond’s shirt and he buried his face in his chest, relishing in the security that accompanied the warmth and musky smell. He couldn’t help but let out a little whimper when he felt the operative’s arms gently wrap him in a protective embrace, cradling his head and his back as to not cause any damage. Though he still could not tell if it was delusion or reality, Q knew that in at least some capacity, he was home. It was impossible to judge how long they sat like that, curled into each other. It was a little complicated with all the IVs and the wires and the noisy machines, but Q couldn’t bring himself to let go. He wanted to stay there forever, safe and warm. 

“You’re okay now,” James murmured after what felt like hours. “You’re safe now.”

Q tried to speak, but his tongue was so dry that only a faint rasping noise made it out instead and it felt as if sand paper had been shoved down his throat. Bond noticed his distress.

“You’re in Medical. We found you four days ago and you’ve been asleep ever since. There was some debate over whether or not you would wake up…”

He kissed his forehead lightly, as if that was explanation enough for the rest. Though it made his whole neck and chest ache to attempt talking again, Q managed to croak, “Mmm… Molly?”

“She’s still in Psychiatrics. Physically she’s fine, but they have her under heavy sedatives. Sherlock is watching over her,” he explained, stroking his hair. “You both need more rest before the doctors will release either of you.”

Q wanted to see Molly. He wanted to be back in her yellow walled flat with her and Toby and James, drinking tea and watching one of her ridiculous television shows, hearing James’ rough breathing and burying his nose in the rich smell of Molly’s wet hair after she used her favorite apple shampoo. He must have drifted off somewhere in the happy thought, because the next time he looked up, James was gone and he was alone in the hospital bed, shivering from the unwelcomed lack of extra body heat. Instead, Sherlock and Mycroft were standing at the entryway, speaking softly to one another. 

“Six days of sleep. That’s quite a lot even for you, brother dear,” Mycroft mused flippantly. 

Q was thrilled to find that some resemblance of use had returned to his vocal cords, and muttered back hoarsely, “Bite me.”

Sherlock smirked, half in entertainment and half in relief, and Mycroft’s annoyed scowl eventually melted into a soft smile. Q wondered if this was some sort of twisted dream, the two men who tried so hard to strip him of his empathy and all sense of sentiment standing watch as if they had actually been scared for his safety. As if they actually cared. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” Sherlock snapped. “Did you really think the British government was responsible for rescuing you all on their own?” 

Though his muscles ached in protest, Q forced himself to sit up. It caught him completely by surprise when the middle Holmes brother approached the bed and placed a pair of specs identical to the ones he had lost right on the bridge of his nose. A wave of relief washed over him as the world came into focus. However, it was frankly appalling to see his reflection in the mirror next to bed. One half his face was completely purple and yellow from heavy bruising, while the other looked sickly skeletal and pale. It looked more like a bird had nested on his head than having actual hair, and the rest of his body was almost completely wrapped in some sort of bandage or stitching, enveloped in a web of IVs and tubes and needles. He grimaced. At least he didn’t look exactly as horrible as he felt.

“If I don’t get out of this bed, I’m going to lose my bloody mind,” he grumbled. “Is Molly still here?”

“She’s still in the padded room,” Mycroft answered, to which Sherlock heavily stepped on his foot, causing him to grunt in pain.

“You can’t walk yet,” Sherlock proceeded. “But they might let her come visit if she’s stable enough.”

This made Q grimace even more than his haggard visage. If the injuries to her mind were traumatic enough to keep her in MI6’s psychiatric ward as long as the injuries to his body kept him here, it was impossible to imagine what they had done to her. Any scientist worth his weight could understand that torture to the brain could be just as damaging as that to the rest of a person. When Sherlock left to check in with Molly’s doctors, it felt like an eternity that Q had to just sit there, counting the stitches in his face. Finally, the sound of careful footsteps echoed through the hall. When Molly appeared in the threshold, Q’s tongue turned to cotton. The pallor of her face matched the white of the hospital hanging loosely over her thin frame almost identically. Her eyes were glazed over in what had to have been a haze of medication. James was behind her, holding her shoulders steady, giving him a stern warning glance. She was not in her right mind. 

At first she just stared past him, dead eyed and unblinking, as if he was nothing but a ghost she couldn’t see. It took several moments and James whispering in her ear before her eyes finally widened in recognition. Or was it horror? Either way, she immediately broke free from her cousin’s supportive grip and threw her arms around Q’s chest. It knocked the wind out of his lungs and made it feel as if his broken ribs were cracking all over again, but the tears that stung his eyes weren’t from pain. Even though it made the raw ends of his fingers sting, he twisted them in her unbound hair, holding her so tightly that he almost couldn’t breathe. Though she hid her face against his chest, he could feel her shoulders start to shake with racking sobs. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said between gasps for air. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he assured her, but she only held him tighter.

“I almost did it. I almost killed you,” she sobbed. 

An invisible fist landed a blow to Q’s stomach. The numbers. It was after he lost the numbers. She was there. He thought it had just been a trick his mind was playing on him to prepare him for death or to numb the pain. The numbers. After the numbers. The same hand that punched his abdomen then took hold over his throat, and his breath shortened. He closed his eyes and tucked Molly in next to him on the bed. One by one, he started counting the vertebrae he could feel down her spine. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. When he ran out of those, he counted her fingers, then her breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. It was only after that the anxiety slowly passed. 

They spent the rest of the day and the next night like that, Molly entangled in his arms and Q counting. He counted when she cried. He counted when nightmares invaded his sleep. He counted when the doctors finally made them part so they could continue their treatments. The routine continued for another two weeks before the MI6 specialists agreed to release them from Medical, and even then under the condition that Molly checked in for daily appointments with a psychiatrist and Q attended physical therapy. He and Molly agreed that it would be best for him to at least temporarily move in with her, and Sherlock and James would take turns checking in on them, dropping off medication or supplying additional support. However, the best medicine was still the numbers. When his knees buckled and refused to let him stand, when the nightmares woke him up and he screamed her out of her sleep, when the anxiety gripped his lungs and denied him breath, counting Molly made it better. Spine, fingers, breaths. One. Two. Three. Four.

It wasn’t until half way through the first week back that he noticed the letters on his back. He had taken off his shirt and bandages to jump in the shower, but spent half an hour staring that them in the mirror. When Molly came to check on him after hearing the water running for so long, she vomited at the sight and would not stop dry heaving. That’s when he taught her to count too. They spent the rest of the night sitting in the shower long after the water had gone cold taking turns counting. 

***  
James nearly knocked his coffee all over the paperwork he was finishing from the Mogadishu mission when he saw Q walking through the lobby. He was leaning on a black metal cane and doing his best to hide a pretty strong limp, but walking none the less. The young man flashed a smirk at the field agent’s surprise.

“Molly sends her love. I dropped her off at the morgue this morning,” he said in his trademark self-confidence, as if nothing had changed over the past three months. “I trust my Walther made it back from Somalia in one piece?”

“Not exactly,” he replied, double checking the calendar under his file. Q was not due back to work for another three weeks. Molly shouldn’t have been at St. Bart’s until at least the start of next month. Sherlock, however, was due for a scathing phone call.

Q let out a melodramatic sigh.

“007, I might just let you get shot next time.”

James followed Q as he made his way down to his own office.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed, grabbing his quartermaster’s arm to stop him before scanning his badge at the elevator to the rest of Q-branch. 

“Preparing the maps and satellite trackers for your trip to Dubai,” he replied nonchalantly. 

As Bond gaped at the sheer nerve of the boy, he noticed that Q’s hand was doing something odd. His middle finger was tapping against his leg in a set four count rhythm, a tick he had never seen before. A tick Molly had also taken up in the past few weeks. The older agent reluctantly let go of Q and watched in awe as he descended to the lower floors of MI6 with the rest of the scientists and tech monkeys who worked behind screens all day. There was something he and Sherlock hadn’t picked up on. Something special about the count.


End file.
